MICHAEL ZYW
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info@poggiolamentano.com
Michael Zyw: Liquid Paints

It has been several decades since the arts have exceeded beyond the established techniques and materials used in painting, sculpture and architecture. Colours in acrylic, resins, contextures; video installations, various conserved or deflected organic materials; photography - implicit or manipulated, instanced with videos - all these profuse mediums are considered intensely stimulating for contemporary artists.

Michael Zyw’s extraordinary paintings incarnate the essence of the art of Aquarelle, in which profuse colour diluted in water arrives at its perfected image. It can be likened to a photo, which can instantly manifest delicate visual impressions born of an observation of reality in continuous movement.
Here natural backgrounds, persons and objects merge into a hidden impression. Thus the abundance of water, which moves upon a paper, controlled by the artist, acts as a foundation and a supra-foundation of colors. It invariably suggests without punctual definition- skies moved by variegated clouds, landscapes stratified unto the horizon and marine waters made brilliant by the light of the sun.














     
 
Also glass, by definition, is a liquid - a liquid under cooled - if one were to infer scientific language. And so it is this medium, ideal for Zyw, which has become an alternative for Aquarelle, a natural developmentof his work. In collaboration with master craftsman of glass, Zyw has realized blocks of Murano crystal within which colours have been captivated - absolutely effectively and respecting the Aquarelles - communicating the living visual impressions of his bright imagination.

Zyw has chosen not blown but solid glass, or in other terms, overlaid “sommerso” glass. With this he crowns with importance and acknowledgment the whole of the Murano glass tradition.

The sculptures in solid “massiccio” flasks seem in fact to re propose the antique collections of the Wunderkammern. It had been the intention to imprison within one glass the manifestations most incredible of the natural world. With Michael Zyw there is no single reproduction of a natural organism, but rather a most interior and personal expression. Zyw could not resist but to implement the traditions of glassmaking at Murano. At other locations, in fact, glass is perceived as a surrogate to rock chystal - that is, a stone to exalt by geometric cuts in its structure. Thus it is destined to lose the liquid essence, which is intrinsic to its true nature.

As John Ruskin clearly expressed in the Stones of Venice, identifying with the sensibility of Venetian glass, it is the most antique of the Mediterranean and European world. Glass will not be betrayed by disguising its malleability, its transparency, and moreover with a modality of its process which demands instantaneous interventions, repeated, struggling against time and in contact with fire.

Zyw intuited that only the super quality of Murano could have satisfied the intense condition to realize his liquid paintings into glass. This formidable conjunction has led this artist to manifest his myriad creative processes. And with continuous bravura. With his keen dedication, and with his superlative application, Michael Zyw has most brilliantly perfected his art.